The subject matter disclosed herein is concerned with image processing technologies. In particular, the subject matter disclosed herein relates to an image processing apparatus and method thereof, managing image data using alpha plane.
In displaying image data on liquid crystal display (LCD) units, cathode ray tubes (CRT), or digital televisions, image data is commonly retrieved from frame memory devices.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a conventional image display system for processing image data.
As shown in FIG. 1, an image display system includes a central processing unit controller 110, an image processor 120, a memory 130, a display processor 140, and a monitor 150.
The image processor 120 receives and processes input image data INDATA in response to instructions from the controller 110. The processed image data include color and alpha components. The image processor 120 further stores the image data in the memory 130. The display processor 140 retrieves the stored image data from the memory 130 and then transfers the output image data OUTDATA to the monitor 150.
With the advancement of image data processing technologies, the degree of image resolution continues to increase, placing additional burden on image data processing speed, as well as requiring additional memory storage capacity. In particular, an image processing system is commonly burdened with operations for writing/retrieving image data to/from the memory within a restricted bandwidth. In an effort to overcome bandwidth limitations, there have been a number of proposed techniques for compressing/restoring images. Technology for compressing/restoring image data commonly employ approaches for compressing and restoring image data using features among pixels or among pixel groups, and displaying them. However, such conventional approaches for image compression/restoration are regarded as being unreliable because compression rates thereof are variable over a large range of features of image data. In addition, distortion errors can be generated between source image data and restored image data. Further, relatively complex hardware architectures are required for the compression function.